Barcelona

Responding to mounting evidence that Spain's university system is one of the most inward-looking in the world, the Spanish government has announced sweeping reforms of the system.

But as public comment closed last week on the reform plan, many researchers were complaining that it does not go far enough.

The new measures include arrangements for evaluating and selecting candidates for junior and full professorships; a programme to lure young Spanish scientists back into the country (see Nature 410, 1014; 2001); and a new agency to assess university research.

Critics have focused on how candidates will be vetted for faculty positions. The plan would introduce more open, merit-based competition to the early part of the recruitment process, but still leaves the final appointment step in the hands of a panel chosen by the university itself.

Ismael Crespo-Martínez, director of universities at the education ministry, says that the new system will put an end to 'inbreeding' in Spanish universities and will boost the mobility of researchers.

But almost 500 staff from 60 universities have sent an open letter to the education minister, Pilar del Castillo, stating that the “anti-inbreeding measures of the new law are no longer useful if the university panel is not made up of outside professors with no scientific links with the applicant”.

One recent survey suggested that the existing system, which gives universities complete autonomy in hiring, leaves Spanish universities ten times more likely to appoint internal candidates to faculty positions than those elsewhere (see Nature 410, 14; 2001)